SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20210521-DB0E5-2147364006. Severity: No Incident, No Injury. Product: GE JB655YKF (30 inch Smooth Surface 5 element 5.3 cu feet self-cleaning convection Freestanding Electric Range. Fingerprint resistant Stainless Steel). Incident: Five months ago my sister and I purchased a GE Self-Cleaning Range. On Sunday, She placed it into the self-cleaning mode. At first there was a warning beep and an indicator that the door needed to be locked. Once that was done, it went into the self-cleaning mode. Within the first hour, smoke detectors began to beep (which we expected). Within the first hour and a half, I noticed that the door was open approximately 2 inches. I asked my sister if she had opened the door and she told me she had not. Upon closer inspection we found the oven still in the cleaning mode and VERY hot, the latch handle completely melted into two. We turned the oven off. Our concern is that the oven should have never continued in self-cleaning mode once the door was opened. A certified repair man informed us that he has been called out for numerous repairs similar to ours. This malfunction is a failure of a safety feature that puts consumers at risk. If we had small children, they could have been severely burned with the excessive heat. We could have had a fire. The latch handle provides no guarantee that the door will not open when it is burned off.